


The Murders After

by nimblermortal



Series: Sour Grapes and Leaf-Green Capes [2]
Category: Bletchley Circle
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 22:58:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimblermortal/pseuds/nimblermortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Circle finds some kidnappings to pay attention to, Millie spends a lot more time with the Grays and tries to deal with her persistent crush on Susan. Lucy has some developments as well, though not for a while yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a relative lot of this for Yuletide and never got round to editing it (sorry), so I'm cleaning up and maybe someday I'll get round to make a consistent plot out of the rest.

“I found it,” Jean said at their next book club meeting. She was clearly wondering how anyone believed they were still reading Great Expectations. “You’re not going to like this.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it,” Susan said, because she was nervous. “To stop things we don’t like. Not that we don’t like, I mean - that aren’t right.”

“Perhaps you ought to sit this one out, Susan,” said Jean.

“Me?” Susan asked. “Aren’t I the one who finds the patterns? Didn’t I suggest it in the first place?”

“We can use Millie’s maps,” Lucy said. She withered under Susan’s look. “I was only... saying...”

“What is it?” Millie asked. She’d bear it for both of them, if she had to. For all of them, if she could; hadn’t she already proved she was the strong one? (Except that Susan was - she was only ever trying to live up to Susan.)

Jean looked once more at Susan, who wasn’t budging. Her mouth pinched thin, she took a folder out of her bag and laid it carefully on the table. For a moment, no one touched it. Then Lucy laid it open so everyone could see what was inside.

It started with newspaper clippings. Millie supposed Susan had made a precedent for them there - and then, it was perhaps easier not to see the horrid things first. To only see the headlines. Inasmuch as it could ever be easy.

“It’s girls again,” Susan said, and her voice was thin enough already. _Why is it always girls?_ she wasn’t asking. _What about Claire_ , she wasn’t asking.

She had told Millie what Timothy had said about it last time. Not our kind of people. But they never were, were they? Until suddenly the killer had his hand on your elbow. Hadn’t the war taught anyone a thing?

“Carter is a boy’s name,” Lucy said. She had picked up one of the clippings, as though it were nothing. Her hand was shaking. Millie reached out and took the paper from her, stilling Lucy’s hand with her own. Just long enough to take the paper, and then Lucy put her hand back in her lap.

Ellen Hodges, said the paper in Millie’s hand, where Jean had circled it in red pencil. Jean said nothing. Millie looked a little farther. She saw the others watching her, no one else reaching for the pages. Damage control. The front line, the headline. The line Jean had carefully removed.

Two years. Four children gone missing. No leads, or none strong enough to yield a suspect.

“They’re children,” Millie whispered.

“Quite,” said Jean. No one was looking at Susan. “It’s not - like the other one. At least, they don’t think it is. No one has found the... children yet.” The room was silent for a moment.

“Bodies,” said Susan. They all jumped. “If there are four of them, there’s been enough time for them to be sequential, enough time for the police to find a link. Enough time that they aren’t coming back. They haven’t found the bodies.”

“They could still be alive,” said Lucy.

“That’s what they tell the parents,” Susan said, as if she had been preparing to say it for years. How many? Oh, how many years old was Sam?

Lucy was still shaking. Susan looked at Millie. “I’ll get the map,” Millie said, standing up and taking Ellen Hodges with her. “Susan, will you show me where?”

“Of course,” Susan said, meaning of course, Lucy didn’t need all of them standing around her now. What she needed was Jean, brisk and efficient and comforting Jean, not smothering in concern and kindness but offering the sort of daily routine that you needed when, you had witnessed and continued to witness the brutal murder scene of a young girl, been beaten by your fiancé, and were now being asked to look in to the probably equally brutal murders of four children.

“There’s a corner shop just down the road, I can buy a map,” Millie offered.

“That won’t be necessary,” Susan said. “I have the last one.”

Millie stared at her. She had kept the map? When all of them had been trying to wash every breath of those weeks off their skin? When Susan had been the one who wound up in that basement -

“I thought it would be useful later,” Susan said, and so she went to the dining room and opened the lowest drawer of the sideboard, and sitting primly and neatly folded next to the linens was the map, and all the other supplies they had needed to find Crowley. “No sense in buying things twice.”

“It’s really no trouble,” Millie said. “You don’t need to keep these.”

“And if we need them later?” Susan said.

She kept them in the linen drawer next to the table cloths. Every time she set the table out again, she reached in past those papers. Because if she did not, then one of her friends might have to. Millie loved Susan, she loved her so much, and even so, Susan did not reach in to take the map. Millie knelt beside her.

“What do we do if Lucy... can’t help anymore?” she asked.

“We still have Jean,” Susan said. “Jean is not easily scared. She’ll develop a filing system.” Not as good as having Lucy, of course, but none of them would put Lucy through anything they didn’t have to. Though did they have a choice, in the end? When they were all Lucy had? Even if she left, she would always see their work at the edges of their lives, hidden politely under _Great Expectations_ and - and in the linen drawer. Lucy wouldn’t give it up, not unless all of them did. Susan wouldn’t ever give it up, not now she’d proven she could do it, and Millie would never give up on Susan.

They would have to find something else for Lucy, of course. For whichever one of them it turned out to be. They couldn’t force each other into this, no matter how accidentally, and the Bletchley Circle was about more than murders.

“How is Timothy taking it?” Millie asked, because the silence was growing between them and they couldn’t hear what Jean might be saying in the next room.

“He doesn’t believe I did anything wrong,” Susan said.

“That’s good,” Millie started to say.

“He just doesn’t know why he believes it,” Susan said. “I gave him every reason not to.”

Millie did not know what to say.

“I promised to stay home for a while.” Susan smiled, a fragile thing broken by being forced through the walls of her face. “He bought me a book of puzzles.”

“Perhaps Jean is right,” Millie suggested. “You could sit just this one out.”

Susan looked away. _What if it’s Sam_ , Millie thought. _What if it’s Claire. What if it’s always Sam and Claire._

“I’m the one who sees the patterns,” Susan said. “I’ll be all right.”

_Will Timothy. Will Sam and Claire_. Millie reached into the linen drawer. Her fingers brushed the map. She would take this for - Susan’s hand settled on top of hers. Millie’s head snapped around to look at Susan. For a moment, their eyes locked.

Then Susan took her hand away, her wedding ring bumping across Millie’s fingers. Millie bit her tongue and remembered - Susan, Timothy, Sam, Claire, Ellen. “I’m good with maps,” she said.

“Yes,” said Susan.

“I might put this up at my apartment,” Millie said, a way of not telling Timothy. Good for the Circle. Good for Millie, who hoarded every tiny thing Susan would give her that she would not give Timothy. A way of hoping that Susan wasn’t as clever as Millie wanted her to be, because a clever Susan would notice that Millie wasn’t telling her to come clean, the way a true friend ought.

“You might do that,” Susan agreed. Millie’s hand was halfway to her lap with the map when Susan added, “but let’s wait until we have something to put on it.

_I don’t want to always be waiting for you,_ Millie thought. “All right,” she said.

 

There wasn’t much for Millie to do until the map got set up. When she was in one of her worse moods, she wondered why she was part of the group at all. She couldn’t remember things like Lucy, or get and organize data like Jean, she didn’t see the patterns half so well as Susan. She was a replacement if Susan got ill or had to see to Sam when he came home early from school - pick up on Susan’s thought and carry on with it, fumbling, until Susan came back and picked up again. Millie was good with maps. It wasn’t exactly an irreplaceable skill. She could bring the others tea and biscuits and rearrange the files. That wasn’t exactly irreplaceable either.

On the better days she remembered that she had had more adventures than any of them, that she knew things they didn’t about how people behaved, that it was Millie Susan had come to first and Millie who had ensured it happened at all, and Millie who was the reason Susan was still breathing in the sunlight and oh God, what if she had been a little later - but she hadn’t been, and if it weren’t for her and her gun, they wouldn’t even have known to go. That was also her strength: she could move on. Except when it came to Susan.

Susan was like the fire in the labyrinth, burning through her walls and mixing all the carefully compartmentalized pieces in a fine layer of ash. Millie didn’t know what to do in her wake except sit in the warmth and stare at the beauty of those flames.  After the fire, everything seemed dull and soft around her; why should she want to put it back the way it was? Easier to let the ash slip through her fingers, to wipe the remnants of it off against Susan’s skin - if Susan would let her. Which she wouldn’t. Which meant that Millie was always trying to rebuild those walls, which she had thought so high when she went abroad. When she came back no one could climb over, but Susan had never even tried. She just came through without asking, like Bletchley was the key to a lock she didn’t know was there, and every name after that was another door opened to let fire in. Bletchley. Jean. Lucy. Crowley.

And then there were the doors in Susan’s life, which by all rights Millie ought to have been able to burn through in her turn, but no, they still stood against her. Timothy. Sam. Claire. Crowley.

Millie tucked her share of newspaper clippings into her copy of Great Expectations and closed it around her finger. The others looked at her as she stood up.

“My eyes won’t focus,” she said. “I’m taking this into the kitchen.”

“Watch out,” Susan said. “The children will be -”

“Home soon. Yes, I know. I thought I might make them something to eat.”

Susan looked confused, as if no one had tried to help her with the children before. That was ridiculous; you couldn’t ask for a better father than Timothy. Who had watched the children while Susan grew more absorbed in the life she was supposed to live?

She wanted in the kitchen so she could see more of Susan’s life. Among the knives and pots and pans, the solid reminder of what was, she might be able to escape the scent of what might be that followed Susan like - oh, how did it go - the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. But though the Song of Songs was the only part of the Bible that Millie knew by heart, she couldn’t remember it now, she must not, because if she did she would start thinking _honey and milk are under thy tongue_ and _be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountain of spices_ and where would that go.

No, this was the kitchen, and any drinking of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate would be just that, the thirsty slurping of juice after a long day at school and the tired admonitions not to make bubbles. Except that Ellen Hughes never would make bubbles anymore, would she? Millie laid the book open on the counter like a recipe and read it as she cut fruit. She could do that with her eyes closed.

When she came back to the parlor, Lucy was reading the files again, looking up regularly to check in with Jean or Susan, making sure she was still in the world of Susan’s front parlor, breaking the reality of the newspapers. Millie stood in the doorway for a moment and then, when she saw Lucy trying too hard to read, reached across the table.

“Have a biscuit,” she offered. Susan looked at her sharply. “They were in the jar by the sink,” she told her. “Sam wanted -”

“You didn’t give Sam a biscuit?” Susan asked, alarmed and already half out of her seat.

“No,” Millie said. “I told him when he was as useful as his Aunt Lucy, he might have one.”

“Ah,” said Susan, satisfied, and then looked back up sharply to say at the same time as Lucy, “Aunt Lucy?”

“Yes,” said Millie serenely, taking a seat and reaching for a folder. She ignored the sharpness in Susan’s tone for the mix of wonder and delight in Lucy’s, because she knew Susan shortly would as well. “Your children could use a few aunts. You haven’t any siblings, have you, Susan?”

“No,” Susan admitted. “Timothy had a brother.”

They were all silent a moment over the past tense. Lucy’s chewing measured the beat of time better than any clock might, but it was the rustling of Jean’s pages that broke it. Jean, Millie realized, was quiet not out of respect, but because she was busy reading and assumed they were as well. She only looked up when they all turned to look at her.

“Well, get busy,” she said, sounding so exactly like she had at Bletchley that all of them started guiltily and fidgeted with their papers before they realized what they were doing and burst out laughing. It was a brittle laughter, though, and it died quickly.

“This isn’t going to be another Crowley, is it?” Lucy asked.

“No,” Jean promised. “There won’t ever be another Crowley.”

Susan promised nothing, Millie noticed. Susan had a tendency to think of her life mathematically and not promise things before she had ruled them out completely. She realized that their silence was tearing a little at Lucy, the uncertainty.

“There won’t ever be another Crowley,” Millie said, “and a good thing, too. We ought to demonize his name; make it synonymous with awful creepy things.”

“Don’t,” Lucy said. “I don’t want to remember him every time a cockroach crawls out from behind the stove.”

“You have cockroaches behind your stove?” Jean asked.

“No,” Lucy said. “But if I did.”

“If, if,” Jean said. “Get back to work.” So they did.

 

Jean was right, of course. This was nothing like Crowley. Crowley was cleverer, and more brutal, and he worked like clockwork - good for determining his methods, good for gathering new evidence. Whoever was taking these children was clearly not so clever - Susan could say that from the patterns, though she couldn’t say what had happened to the children already taken or even when to start worrying. All of the children had disappeared in the last six months, but not with any regularity; it had taken Jean’s sharp eye to spot the connection.

“I think they must not be dead,” Susan said after a week. “How else could they still not have been found?”

“It’s like they go to another world,” Millie complained.

“Not dead is good,” Lucy said. “Very good,” she added, sounding so like Jean that Millie could imagine Jean’s hand clasped firmly on her shoulder as she said it. Millie was not entirely certain that leaving the two of them alone together so often was a good idea.

“It doesn’t give us much to go on, though,” Jean said. “Not until he takes another child and we have fresh evidence to look at.”

“He’ll slip,” Susan said, and Millie wasn’t sure if she was confident or determined. “He already has. I just can’t see it yet.”

And in the meantime they met at least once a week, and Millie came early so she could bring the map and put the pins back in the right places, and they all compared hypotheses, and when the children came home Millie slipped over to the kitchen to make tea, which lasted almost as long as it took the children to grow tired of whatever games they came home from school with and come whining for their mother’s attention. Millie hardly blamed them.

One day they came in just as Susan was leaning over the map, her hand hovering with a new pin. Millie looked up sharply, suddenly torn between the map, her map, and watching Susan work, and keeping the way clear for her to work; it had become Millie’s job to keep the children at bay while the Circle met, and she thought Susan was grateful for the reprieve. She was a more contented mother when she had it, which gave Millie mixed feelings about the whole business - but the business now was that Susan was busy and in her element, and in a moment Claire’s grubby fingers would close on her skirt and ruin everything.

“Claire,” Millie said sharply. Susan jolted. Millie reached past her to take Claire’s hand. “I have a puzzle for you.”

“Like Mother does?” Claire asked.

“Child-sized. We’ll work you up to Mother-sized puzzles,” Millie promised. “Come on, Sam. We’ll have a race to see who gets it first. You’re on an island with a goat, a cabbage, and -”

“Goats are boring,” Sam said, as though he were an authority. Millie would have believed him if he had chosen to pick on the cabbage; but perhaps he thought there was something fascinating about cabbage leaves.

“Then you must let me finish, Sam. You’re on an island with a goat, a cabbage, and a terrible, ravenous wolf.” She took Sam’s hand and led him away as well, to the table where she could find paper and a pencil to illustrate this conundrum, how to get the goat and the cabbage away and yes, Sam, you must take the wolf with you as well, when your boat would only hold one passenger - yes, Claire, the cabbage counts. That’s because there’s a fairy living inside. Susan was taken aback when Claire declared that no matter what lived inside, that didn’t change the cabbage’s ability to take up space.

“It’s an entire fairy house,” Millie said after a moment to think. “It’s bigger on the inside, and heavier. That’s why you can’t take it on the boat with the goat or the wolf.”

“Then how do you get it on the boat?” Claire asked.

Millie stopped before she could suggest rolling it. The two children were looking at her expectantly. “It’s only heavier on the inside,” she said, and for some reason that satisfied children who weren’t satisfied with a cabbage taking up an entire seat on the boat.

“Who won the race?” Susan asked when Millie came back.

“Claire did,” Millie said. She didn’t say that she had given Claire a biscuit from her purse, or that she had brought the biscuit for just that purpose. “She’s very bright.”

“Yes,” said Susan. “She does quite well in school.”

“What did I miss?” Millie asked, looking at the map.

“I think the children all vanished here,” Susan said, gesturing to an area on the map. “On their way home from school. The districts are here to here and here, the houses under the green pins. So if they took the shortest route, then... well, either they all came down this street or they didn’t.” Her shoulders sagged. “It doesn’t match the data, really.”

“There isn’t enough data,” Millie assured her. “Besides, when do children take the most direct route home?”

“When Sam knows there’s biscuits waiting for him,” Jean suggested. “You’ve got to stop bringing them round, Lucy.”

Lucy. Millie breathed a little more easily.

“I do so like little boys,” Lucy protested. “They’re so...”

“I know,” said Susan, smiling. “Sam’s a darling boy. Thank you for looking after them, Millie.”

She was not so pleased with Millie the next time Millie came round.

“Sam says he likes Aunt Millie’s sandwiches better than mine,” Susan said.

“I didn’t call myself his aunt,” Millie promised. “Just Lucy.”

“And Jean,” Susan said. “Aunt Lucy, Aunt Jean, what were they supposed to think?

“They’re very good at reason.”

“My problem,” Susan said, “is that my son is not supposed to like his ‘aunt’ Millie’s sandwiches better than his own mother’s.”

“He likes butter,” Millie said. “That’s all. I put a layer of butter on the bread first. They do it that way at the café, it keeps pickle juice from seeping into the bread. It’s hard to remember there’s no rations anymore.”

“Oh,” said Susan, mollified. “Just - see he doesn’t have too much butter, then.”

“I promise,” Millie said.

 

Millie went home and put new pins in the map. She had wrapped colored twists around some of the heads to distinguish from the others - colors and blobs and shapes, she ought to take up some sort of paper decorating competition. She moved them around the map, in and out, and after a while she just sat back and rearranged the map in her head. Children missing here, schools there, houses there. Doctors appointments, the houses of possible neighborhood friends. There had to be a correlation, and if there was, she was determined to find it.

Then she sat up and looked at the wall, the map spread out across the paper like a coffee stain on a table. She needed to wipe it clean. What would do that? Not putting any more god damned pins in it. Taking them out, perhaps. She went back to the basics, took all the pins out - making a careful catalogue of their locations first - and stared at the map. Her eyes ached and her fingers were sore. She put the green pins back, and the blue ones. And then the blue bobby ones for family. Then she got her purse and went to Susan’s house.

It was dinnertime. She had forgotten about dinner, and she was bound to go hungry this evening, but that was all right. It was a decision she had made as an adult looking after herself, and she could weather anything if it were her own decision. She knocked on the door and there was a confused silence before it opened. She looked down to find Sam standing there.

“It’s Aunt Millie,” he called into the house. She heard Timothy’s voice asking some banal question about who Aunt Millie was. Clearly Susan didn’t tell him anything - she didn’t trust him. A pretty thing, that she didn’t trust the husband she had passed up Millie for.

“Millie?” Susan asked, coming around the corner but no further. “What are you doing here?”

“I found it,” Millie said.

Timothy appeared behind Susan. Susan said, “Found what?” and Millie had to scramble for some lie to make things make sense.

“The... thing we were looking for,” she tried. “For our book club.”

Timothy was looking very confused. “I’m beginning to wonder just what you do at that book club,” he said.

“You said yourself,” Susan said. “We talk and talk and nothing gets done.”

_Except I did something_ , Millie thought. _I finally did something, and now you won’t let me say a word about it_.

“I got excited,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Timothy asked. “Book club isn’t until next week.” He wasn’t looking at her face. It took Millie a moment to realize he was looking at Sam’s; when she looked down, Sam was staring up at her the way she had looked at her older cousin Will when she was his age. Where was Claire?

“Come in,” Timothy said. “We were just having dinner. You could join us.”

Millie looked at Susan, but it was Claire who answered, still just a voice from another room. “We’re having pork,” she called. “It’s my favorite.”

“I’ll get another plate,” Susan said, in the way she did when she was surrendering to a force she did not appreciate in her life. Millie was accustomed to her finding another way to get back at whatever pushed her aside, and she did not like to think what complicated algorithm Susan would find to punish her. Timothy caught her shoulder and said something softly to her, but Millie couldn’t listen without making it obvious, so she hung her coat up and shut the door behind her instead.

“Aunt Millie’s staying for dinner,” Sam yelled to Claire, making it impossible to catch a word of that conversation. A moment later, Claire came barreling around the corner, shouting something and rocketing forward to latch her arms around Millie.

“Claire,” Timothy said, and Claire reluctantly stepped back and offered her hand.

“How do you do,” she said, like a well-trained pony. Millie took it and resisted the urge to turn the gesture into a bow, kissing her hand like a knight to a lady. Instead she shook it gravely and said her own how-do-you-do and turned back to Timothy.

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“Clearly,” Timothy said, and Millie had no idea what went on in his head. He moved towards her, and Millie realized he had a limp from some injury in the war. Her deep desire to hate him battled briefly with her automatic respect for the soldiers who had saved their country, but the hatred won out, only slightly diluted. She smiled politely at him. “My children seem to know you better than I do.”

“I’ve been visiting regularly,” Millie admitted.

“You don’t have children of your own, then?” Timothy asked, and Millie realized he was giving her the perfect excuse.

“No,” she said. “I went traveling after the war, and when I came back...” She shrugged. He didn’t have to know the rest of it was _the woman I wanted was taken_.

“That’s a shame,” Timothy said. “They seem to adore you.” He made a gesture inviting her to the table. In his presence, Sam and Claire seemed much more subdued, or perhaps well-behaved, since they were clearly thrumming with exciting. “Claire left her pork for you.”

“It’s very good,” Claire said. “Mother makes the best pork in England. I know, I’ve been to Christmas dinner.”

“I’m sure it’s quite good,” Millie agreed. “You’ll have to show me which are the best bits.”

“Just how did you and Millie meet?” Timothy asked. “I never learned.”

Millie smiled at him again, trying to seem distracted by the children. “It was the war,” she said. “All sorts of people got thrown together who might never have met otherwise. I suppose I have something to be grateful for. Your wife is a wonderful woman.”

“She’s quite exceptional, isn’t she,” said Timothy, and maybe Millie just wanted everything to be right about Susan, but she thought he didn’t seem as blandly polite when he said it.

“The most exceptional woman I have ever met,” Millie said. Claire tugged at her hand and Millie looked down at her. “You might give her some competition in a few years.”

“They both take after their mother.”

“Really?” Millie asked. “They look quite like you. Sam has your eyes.”

“ _Father_ ,” Sam complained.

“All right,” Millie said. “What’s the latest story? Cowboys? Gangsters? Dinosaurs on a spaceship?”

“Indians,” Sam declared. “In China.” He was fully prepared to launch into a complicated rendition, which usually involved his showing Millie the blank pages of the same book and explaining, in belabored sentences, what was going on in each scene.

Timothy listened to Sam go on in amusement and some bewilderment, but he didn’t interfere until Sam was winding down - something about ice cream and a girl being eternally grateful, though he seemed to have thrown her in more from a sense of duty than an attention to narrative.

“Now then,” he said, not looking at Susan, “what’s so important that you had to come rushing over in the middle of dinner time?”

_Damn_ , Millie thought. “It was silly of me,” she said. “We’re reading one of those Agatha Christie books, and I figured out who had done it. I’m very nearly certain I’m correct, and she’s so twisty I got quite pleased with myself.”

“That’s not true,” Claire said. Everyone turned to look at her. She didn’t look back, busily trying to figure out how to get a bite of pork away from the rest. She didn’t appear to have had any vegetables on her plate at all. “You’re always talking about Bletchley and that Ellen girl in the whatsit school. And you’re reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.”

“We finished that, dear,” Susan said. “Ellen is in the Christie novel.”

“Well, what’s this revelation, then?” Timothy asked.

“It’s geographical,” Millie said. “I could show you, if you like. All of the, er, important events happened around Carter Hall - you can see that if you adjust for dates, holidays, that sort of thing. It’s Claire’s fault I thought of it, really, she was just talking about holidays.”

Timothy and Susan were both staring at her. “You got all that from a book?” Timothy asked. “Why not just read the ending?”

“You amaze me,” said Susan, and Millie felt her whole inside warm. “Are you sure?”

“I can show you, if you like,” Millie said.

“I think you may be reading too much into this,” said Timothy.

“No, that’s the game of it,” Susan said.

“What if you’re wrong?”

“If you look at it closely enough, Agatha Christie is wrong,” Millie said. “Sometimes the culprits in her books just don’t match the facts of the case. They may have the motive, but they don’t have the right pattern. Susan is very good at finding these patterns.”

Timothy sat back in his chair. “Is that where you were all those weeks?” he asked. “At Millie’s, charting away at Great Expectations?”

“More or less,” Susan admitted.

“May I see the map?” Claire asked. Susan looked promptly horrified.

“When you’re older,” Millie said.

“Promise,” Claire said, and Sam, who had been ignoring the whole conversation, looked up. Millie was not going to include him in this promise.

“I don’t think you’ve had any peas yet, Claire,” she said.

“I don’t like peas. I want to see the map.”

“Not today, Claire,” said Susan. “Finish your supper.”

“I want to see the map,” Claire whined.

“I’ll get you a copy of the book,” Millie promised.

“Yes, which book is it?” Timothy asked. “I don’t recall Christie being so strong on geography.”

Millie and Susan looked at each other in consternation. “The new one,” said Susan.

“You have to read into it, like,” said Millie.

“I want -” Sam began.

“Children!” Timothy barked. “Am I to have no peace at my own table?”

Sam and Claire looked abruptly shifty and cowed. “Sorry, Papa,” said Claire.

“Anyway I was thinking,” said Millie, “we could take book club to Carter Hall next meeting, a sort of... immersion thing, see if we see anything from being there.”

“Hmm,” said Susan.

“Wait until the weekend,” said Timothy.

“What?”

“Wait until the weekend. Then we can all go,” said Timothy.

“That’s -”

“A grand idea,” said Susan. Millie just stared at her. Susan scraped calmly at her steadily emptying plate as though nothing had happened, as though it were settled. Mille could not believe her. “Why don’t you tell us about your work?” she asked Timothy.

Of all things, Sam perked right up. “Tell about Duncan!” he ordered.

“I already told you -”

“I want to hear about Duncan. Aunt Millie hasn’t heard about Duncan.” Timothy looked belabored. Millie imagined he heard this every evening at bedtime. Nevertheless, he began on what had clearly started out as a common work story. Millie didn’t pay a whole lot of attention, since it was aimed at Sam. She spent her time glaring daggers at Susan until she could offer to help clear the table.

“Are you insane,” she hissed at Millie. “We can’t bring Timothy. We can’t get anything done with him there.”

“I’ve been thinking about telling him anyway,” Susan said. “Then we could bring the map back here and -”

“Tell him?” Millie asked. “You can’t tell him. If you tell him about us, he’ll start asking questions. He’ll ask how we met - he already asked me. And you know where that will lead.” She drew a circle on the countertop. Bletchley. Or O, for _Official Secrets Act_.

“I have to tell him sometime.”

“No,” said Millie, “you signed the Act. You can’t ever tell him, ever.”

Susan looked rebellious. “It’s only Timothy. And it could ruin our entire relationship if he keeps thinking -”

“Would you have said ‘only Timothy’ during the War?” Millie asked. “You’re not thinking, Susan. You can’t tell him.”

“So I’ll have to find something else to tell him,” Susan said. “Why can’t I just say I met you at the DI’s?”

“How would we have met?” Millie asked. “Let it go, Susan. To Timothy, we’re a book club. To Claire... well, we’ll have to make sure she’s out of sight when we talk, that’s all. And speaking of Claire, Timothy clearly meant to take her with us to Carter Hall.”

“There’ll be the four of us there and Timothy. Five people ought to be able to look after two children in a place where children don’t _usually_ disappear.”

“More often there than elsewhere, if I’m right,” Millie muttered. “And what if he asks after that book?”

“That’s your problem,” Susan said. “You made it up.”

“Made what up?” Timothy asked.

“That horrible story Sam keeps asking me for,” Millie said without missing a beat. “With the dinosaurs. Or was it the Chinese Indians? I can’t recall. Sam does. You seem to have your own version.”

“He’ll grow out of it,” Timothy said. “Claire did. I’m going to take them up to bed, all right, Susan?”

“I’ll just finish these and say goodbye to Millie,” Susan said. She watched Timothy leave.

“There he is: the coveted husband,” Millie said. “Up the stairs to tuck the children into bed. All you ever dreamed of?”

“And more,” Susan said. “Let Jean and Lucy know we’re meeting Saturday, will you? And that Timothy is coming. He will ask about the book, you know.”

“I’ll write the book,” Millie said, resigned. “How hard can it be?”


	2. Ooops I completely forgot I wrote this

“Why is Timothy going to be there?” Jean wanted to know, and Lucy too, though Lucy’s voice was softer.

“Because I made a mistake,” Millie said. “I got excited, I got sloppy. I won’t do it again.”

“When you find something, you don’t assume that it is anything,” Jean said. “You assume it is your mistake. Then you assume the enemy put it there for you to find. Then you talk to someone else, quietly, until you’re certain.”

“This isn’t war, Jean,” Millie said. “The enemy isn’t trying to put us off.”

“Aren’t they?” Lucy asked.

“Not this one,” Millie said. “This one isn’t that clever.”

“How do you know?” Jean asked. “You’re jumping to conclusions again.”

“Because I’ve lived, Jean!” Millie said. “Sometimes you jump to conclusions because you haven’t time to work things out logically. That’s when you find out that your first guess is usually right.”

“And when it’s not, you’re dead,” Jean said. “You’re right, this isn’t war, and we are not on the battlefield. You have time to think, and you have time to talk to the rest of us. You know what happens when you don’t.”

Lucy. Susan. Millie was clearly next in line, since Jean would never do anything rash. She was probably right, but Millie didn’t want to admit it.

“Well, come prepared not to let Sam talk you into buying him an ice cream,” she said.

“You ought to watch out for Claire,” Lucy said. “It’s Claire you spoil.”

“I do not,” Millie said.

“You do so. You’re always talking about how bright Claire is, and how -”

“She is bright. I wouldn’t say it if she weren’t.”

“Sam’s bright, too.”

“You’re only saying that because Sam is the darling boy -”

“And you’re only saying that because Claire’s a girl,” Lucy said. “You see, it cuts both ways.”

“Words and knives often do,” Jean said. “Stop bickering, girls, we’ve a Hall to get to. Are the Grays meeting us there or at the train?”

“There,” said Millie. “And it’s more of a square, really. There’s a fountain with a fish. I went and looked... after...” She went quiet again, noticing that this was exactly what Jean had been cautioning her against. Jean didn’t say anything, but the air of her silence had a distinctly smug tinge. Lucy didn’t say anything either, but she looked sympathetic. Millie wasn’t sure why. The only time Lucy had done something rash was when the rest of them had talked her into it.

Carter Hall was everything they had not hoped for: big, bustling, with a bookshop on one side and an ice cream shop not far from it.

“How have I not been here before?” Lucy asked. “There’s so many people.”

“It doesn’t exist,” Susan said. “It’s a place spun out of stories by the fairy queen. She sings it back to sleep when she’s finished with it. If you look closely, you can see her. She’s wearing green.”

It took Lucy a moment to realize she was talking to her children. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to lie to them,” she said, but no one paid her any mind, least of all the children.

“What’s here when she hasn’t laid it out?” Claire asked.

“Not much,” said Susan. “A lot fewer people.”

“What happens if you’re still here when she sings it to sleep?” Sam asked.

“She closes it back up around you - _snap!_ ” Susan said. “But she never does that if you’re not alone, so just you stay near to your father. He’ll keep her away.”

That was actually pretty clever, Millie thought. She should have expected it, coming from Susan.

“But where does it come from?” Claire asked. “And how can Father keep her from closing it if all she has to do is sing? He can’t stop her from singing from across the square.”

“You’ll see when she tries,” Susan said. “Go see him now, I think he wants to buy you a book.” The children went running off across the square, racing really except that they were holding hands, and Susan turned back to the others. “That solves those problems,” she said. “Millie, I thought you were writing us a book?”

Lucy and Jean stared at her. “It’s coming slowly,” Millie said. “I didn’t think writing was this _hard_.”

“Well, just type up a Christie novel with a few more place names in it,” Susan suggested.

“Murder on the Orient Express,” Jean suggested. “They don’t usually travel quite so much.”

“You’ve read them?”

“Jean’s read everything. Come on now, what do you see?”

They looked around, leaning back against the side of the fountain where they wouldn’t be in the way. Lucy was looking down the length of the square; following her gaze, Millie found Claire and Sam running into their father. So Susan hadn’t left them unwatched for a moment. Millie herself found nothing useful in the square; too many people running around, too much space, too much time for things to have happened between the kidnappings and now. A terrible place for a murderer; an opportune one for a kidnapper, too many people to worry about a child wandering off with an adult, especially just after school hours.

“We’re not going to find anything,” she said. “Too many people, especially during holidays.”

“We can guard it,” Jean said.

“Four of us, in all this?” Susan asked. “No. We’ll have to find something else. Sorry, Millie.”

“There must be something here,” Lucy said. She was peering at everything, as though if she could see it all, she could remember it all, and then she could find something in it. It was possible, Millie supposed. Just not bloody likely.

“Not for us to find,” Millie said. “We can come back later, during a holiday maybe.”

“Or when there’s another child missing,” Jean muttered. Millie hoped no one could hear her.

“We’ll have to start somewhere else,” Susan said. “Lucy, tell me about the children again.”

“Not yet,” Jean said. “When we’re in private. For now, we have to come up with a lie to tell Mr Gray.”

“Sorry,” Millie muttered.

“Make it a good lie,” Susan said. “We need to come back. To talk to the children’s parents.”

“Why do I have to do the lying?” Millie asked.

“Because you’re best at it,” Lucy said.

Millie stopped, trapped. She didn’t want that to be true; she didn’t want her talent to lie in lying, because she didn’t want lying to be something that they needed. They were trying to be the police, except better; there shouldn’t be any shame in that, nothing to be hidden. But if they didn’t need to stay hidden, then what good was she? She’d gotten them into this mess with lies told too quickly. She’d think of a better lie to get them out of it. And the first step was clearly to tell Timothy that they had been lying to him, not least because Millie highly doubted she was a good enough liar to make up an entire Agatha Christie novel in the next few days.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So - this is where my manuscript says, "Fill in a lie, stuff". I no longer know quite what that means, so I'm going to post what comes after and hope it makes sense. Enjoy your time with Lucy!

Someone had to visit the families. Lucy had to go, of course, to be sure they didn’t miss anything, but someone had to go to make sure they got it in the first place, which meant Millie or Susan. Millie assumed Susan would go, since she was the empathetic one with children of her own. They all did, until Susan declared she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Timothy needs me to stay at home for a while,” she said.

“Why?” asked Jean; for once it wasn’t Millie. “You manage things perfectly.”

“He needs to know that I’m here,” said Susan. _Like a prison_ , thought Millie. She wondered that Susan couldn’t see it; but then, Susan probably looked at her life and saw only the bars of insecurity, of financial instability, of a work life that left no room for anything except the moments she stole for their little circle. Millie had no Sam, no Claire, no Timothy, and she was beginning to think that was all that mattered to Susan anymore, and all Susan saw was Millie’s increasing role as her children’s aunt, as if that were something Millie chose for herself rather than for Susan and for Claire.

And what if it was? At least Millie still had the choice. She chose to spend time with Susan’s children and no one told her otherwise; not like Susan, who chose the Circle and then retreated back into her house as soon as Timothy called her name.

But Susan was stuck at home, so Millie went with Lucy to talk to the parents. Lucy took a clipboard; she looked like a librarian wandering lost through the streets, someone who ought to be at home in Jean’s stacks. Perhaps they ought to keep Jean from playing quite such a large role in what Lucy clearly accepted as a remodeling of her life; but it seemed to work for Jean, and Lucy could use that sort of backbone, so Millie thought it might not be her place to say. Unless Jean were kissing Lucy, in which case Millie didn’t know whether to be protective or jealous.

It turned out the clipboard was a stupider idea than Millie had thought. Lucy didn’t need it, of course, so clearly she had brought it for Millie, or to conceal something to show the parents, or as a disguise; something Jean had suggested, certainly, but perhaps something Susan had suggested through her. But when they knocked on the first door (Tamara Banks), the man took one look at Lucy’s clipboard and said, “I’m not signing anything” before closing the door on them.

Millie’s foot was in the door already. It stung as the door swung shut on it, but he hadn’t closed it with enough force to do damage to that large an impediment. Millie barely had to grit her teeth to say, “Hear us out.”

“I said I’m not signing anything,” he said, and kicked her toe out the door so he could close it.

She thought that was a fluke until Ellen Hughes’s father did the same. By the time they got to Barbara Goodman’s house, Millie’s feet were sore and she was not willing to take another rejection. She had had enough of playing meek with a pretense for her presence. She stuck her foot in the crack as soon as it had opened.

“Millie Coleman,” she said. “I’m here to speak to you about Barbara.”

“Oh,” said the woman. “My husband isn’t in.”

“I’d be just as happy to speak to you,” Millie said, thinking, _Happier_.

“We already told the police everything we know,” said Mrs. Goodman.

“I’m not with the police,” said Millie.

“Then who are you?”

Millie looked her over and realized this was not worth a gamble. She glanced at Lucy. Lucy took a nervous step forward.

“We want to help,” she said. “We think there are things the police might not be seeing.”

“Things a mother would know to pay attention to,” Millie hinted. “Things the police might not think were worth noticing.”

“My Alan says not to let anyone who’s not the police in,” she said. “Not journalists. Not... people.”

“We’re not going to steal from you,” Lucy said.

“Lucy couldn’t overpower someone with a ton of counterbalance,” Millie said, which was not the right thing to say. They found themselves on the street again.

“I knew Susan should have come,” Lucy said miserably.

“Chin up, Lucy,” said Millie, and fished a sandwich out of her bed. “We’re just getting the hang of it.”

“We’ve run through nearly all of the victims,” Lucy said.

“There’s Carter Hughes left,” Millie said. “And we can wait for this woman’s husband to come home. She ought to be more forthcoming if he’s around.”

“You’re sure he’ll let us in?” Lucy asked. Millie was not.

“Maybe we should get Jean to find their statements for us,” she said. “We might have missed something there.”

Lucy opened her mouth. “Mrs. Coleman, thirty-two, was able to offer limited further information...”

“Not now,” Millie said. “We’ll... try something else.”

Lucy opened her mouth, then closed it again, looking like she wanted to say something but wasn’t brave enough. Millie looked at her expectantly and didn’t say anything.

“I have an idea,” Lucy said slowly. “I need you to buy me a hat.”

 

Several minutes and many cries of, “You came back for this?” and “That’s a man’s hat!” and “You look ridiculous, Lucy, I don’t know what you’re about,” later, they knocked on Mrs. Goodman’s door again. 

“You again?” she asked. “I told you -”

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Goodman, but I don’t think we were properly introduced earlier,” said Lucy, taking off the hat she had just straightened on her head. Millie wondered what she was about; she didn’t sound at all like the Lucy she knew. Perhaps she ought to wonder what Jean was about. “My name is Lucy Holmes; you may have heard of my grandfather. This is my associate, Millie Marple.”

Mrs. Goodman gave them a very close look. Then she looked at the hat Lucy was idly turning in her hands. It was old, battered, and, as Millie now saw was the most important part, deerstalker.

“We wanted to ask you about Barbara,” Millie prompted.

“Yes, well,” said Mrs. Goodman. “Come in.”

Millie gave Lucy a questioning look as she came inside. Lucy shrugged a very little bit. But Mrs. Goodman did not just invite them in, she served them tea and biscuits, and let Millie ask her questions. Lucy stayed standing and did not say anything. She did not take any tea, either, and kept fidgeting at things.

“Thank you, Mrs. Goodman,” she said when Millie was winding down. “I think we have all we need.” And out they went.

“What was all that about?” Millie asked. “We don’t have anything at all yet, or we don’t know that we do.”

“It was the role,” Lucy said. “Sherlock Holmes said exactly that once. With a different name, I mean. It was remarkably easy, I just made sure to do all the things Holmes did when questioning witnesses and she thought - well, she didn’t think I was him, but she wanted to think I was close.”

“I can’t say I understand at all,” Millie said.

“She needed a reason to let herself think we could help,” Lucy said. “And I thought about you and Susan and that stupid lie you told Timothy, and about how popular Mrs Christie is, and I thought that everyone reads her and so Mrs. Goodman probably does too - if not before Barbara went missing, then certainly after.”

“She needed to believe someone could help. Or to think she had an idea what was going on,” Millie said. “It’s not like the War, when everything’s like that and at least you know why and that you’re not alone, and what’s being done about it, and - well, there’s patterns you can find, and they might not be true but you can think they are.”

“I suppose so,” Lucy said slowly. “So what I did was give her a pattern to look at.”

“But what made you think to do that?” Millie asked. Lucy blushed.

“Jean says I need to be braver,” she said. “She said it might be easier if I pretend to be someone else when I need to be brave. I’ve been pretending to be Jean - she’s the bravest person I know - but it occurred to me that I could pretend to be anyone at all. And of course all I had to do was remember the right lines.”

Which was no problem for Lucy. It also explained why she had been acting so much like Jean. What Millie couldn’t understand was why she chose to pretend to be Jean when Susan was right there - Millie pretended to be Susan all the time.

“Well, I’m glad it worked,” she said. “Do you think it would work on the others?”

“It might,” Lucy said.

“Well, let’s try,” Millie said. “See if their stories are anything like Barbara’s. Just - well, do what you do. We’ll take it all to Susan afterward.”

Lucy nodded once and then looked down at the hat in her hands. “It really doesn’t go with anything,” she said.

“Keep it,” said Millie. “Your grandfather Holmes would have wanted you to have it.”


End file.
